Paywallshttp://www.businessinsider.com/category/paywalls
en-usTue, 03 Mar 2015 18:14:33 -0500Tue, 03 Mar 2015 18:14:33 -0500The latest news on Paywalls from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-times-swings-back-into-profit-and-posts-digital-subscriber-uplift-2014-12News UK: Our Paywalls Are Working. Here Are The Numbers To Prove Ithttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-times-swings-back-into-profit-and-posts-digital-subscriber-uplift-2014-12
Tue, 02 Dec 2014 12:37:00 -0500Lara O'Reilly
<p class="p1"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/547df2856da811810f10debb-978-733/the-times-front-page.png" border="0" alt="The Times front page"></p><p>Fresh from announcing "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-sun-digital-paywal-subscribers-2014-11">The Sun" had doubled its paying digital subscribers year on year</a>, newspaper publisher News UK Ltd. has posted growth across the board for "The Times" and "The Sunday Times," which first put all content behind a paywall back in 2010.</p>
<p class="p2"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">News UK’s chief marketing officer Chris Duncan tells Business Insider UK that the UK newspaper publisher’s recent figures prove it has established “a fair value for digital journalism.” He is implying that News UK's stats show you don't have to give away your content for free online to have a sustainable digital publishing business.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Digital subscribers pay £26 per month to access The Times and The Sunday Times website and app (but numbers are reported separately as some Apple Newsstand users opt for different packages, comprising of just The Sunday Times, for example). Here are the most interesting recent digital stats from The Times and The Sunday Times, released Tuesday (December 2.)&nbsp;</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Times’ digital subscribers increased 8% year on year 152,000.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Sunday Times’ digital subscriber number rose 12% year on year to 154,000.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Overall, 170,000 subscribers take a digital-only membership, up 12% year on year.&nbsp;</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Times Newspapers Ltd, which operates both The Times and Sunday Times newspapers and is owned by News UK, <strong>posted its first profit since 2001</strong> in the year ended June 2014.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Profit stood at £1.7 million, up from a loss of nearly £6 million in 2013.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Total paid sales (including print) for The Times rose 3% year on year to 545,000 (print sales rose 1%.)</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Total paid sales for The Sunday Times fell 2% to 958,000 (print sales fell 4%.)</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sales now account for 51% of revenue, while 44% comes from advertising.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Those reading the iPad edition spend an average of 47 minutes reading an issue — far more time than most people spend on a website.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class="p2"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Now let’s look at The Sun’s figures released in November, where subscribers are billed £7.99 per month</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Digital subscribers were up 92% since The Sun last released figures in December 2013 to 225,000.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Total paid sales (using October print sales numbers) were down 2.2% year on year to 2,203,000 (versus an annual decline of nearly 8% for the popular/middle section of the market.)</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">News UK did not strip out separate income figures for The Sun.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class="p2"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/547df46aecad046e586044d7-903-677/chris-duncan-news-uk-2.png" border="0" alt="chris duncan news uk">Duncan told Business Insider that News UK considers itself an “outlier and a pioneer” in the UK newspaper market when it comes to digital. He told us:</span></p>
<p>“We are helping establish a fair value for digital journalism. At the time we announced The Times paywall five years ago, that was valued as free, with some ad revenue, but over time we have built a digital proposition around customer value.</p>
<p>“We’ve taken it upon ourselves to lead the market on fair pricing for that digital content. We know we’ve been an outlier and a pioneer and we have to create our own metric of success."</p>
<p>He describes those metrics as: arresting a long-term decline, moving into profit, continuing year on year growth in both digital and print and to convince the audience to pay a “fair and sustainable price.”</p>
<p>There are several caveats to all the positive figures.</p>
<p><strong>First:&nbsp;</strong>Not all digital subscribers are equal in terms of income. Some — particularly in the case of The Sun — are paying a discounted price, or even receiving free memberships (customers of mobile carrier O2, for example, are currently being offered limited-time free subscriptions to "The Sun" as part of their package.) Also, News UK counts a subscriber as someone with an active membership, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re accessing the site or apps (think about people who receive a free membership from their employer.)</p>
<p class="p2"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Second:</strong> Going behind a paywall dramatically decreases the discoverability of your content via channels like social and search. The Sun's website previously reported 30 million uniques, according to the most recent figure before it went paid-for. Sites behind a hard paywall like those on The Sun and The Times <a href="http://www.themediabriefing.com/article/being-found-behind-the-paywall-sun-google">aren't listed as favorably as free sites on Google News</a>, and many who click on links to those sites from social may be disappointed they have to pay to read the content. The result? The Sun and The Times have to work a lot harder (read: pay more through marketing and advertising) to reach new audiences.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>Third:</strong>&nbsp;The Times swinging back into a profit is only partly attributable to growing digital and print sales. The company recently cut down on property costs by moving to new offices near The Shard in London Bridge that it shares with Dow Jones and Harper Collins. News UK has also spent years making its back-end CRM systems more efficient, so acquiring and retaining customers is far cheaper. News UK is also growing its Newsprinters business, which has contracts to print newspapers not only for its own titles but editions of The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times an local titles, which brings in additional income.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Duncan also admits there is a long way to go until The Times Newspapers Ltd. is reporting “sustainable profit,” but moving back into the black is nonetheless preferable to the £60 million in losses it reported in the year prior to the launch of the paywall.</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Where could future growth come from? Duncan says international could well be an option, which could see News UK following in the footsteps of rival British publishers like The Guardian (which in recent months and years has opened offices in the US and Australia) and MailOnline (which also recently launched in the US) in extending its footprint overseas.</span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-sun-digital-paywal-subscribers-2014-11#ixzz3KlHCJOJh" >The Sun Has Doubled The Number Of Its Paying Subscribers Online</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-times-swings-back-into-profit-and-posts-digital-subscriber-uplift-2014-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-sun-digital-paywal-subscribers-2014-11The Sun Has Doubled The Number Of Its Paying Subscribers Onlinehttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-sun-digital-paywal-subscribers-2014-11
Mon, 24 Nov 2014 13:06:00 -0500Lara O'Reilly
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54737107eab8ea1817f32202-634-476/the-sun-website-1.png" alt="the sun website" border="0"></p><p>The UK's biggest newspaper, The Sun, claims its number of digital paid-for subscribers has more than doubled in a year to 225,000 users.</p>
<p>The newspaper says the majority of these users are billed £7.99 per month, the equivalent of buying a print copy four times per week. For that amount, users get access to The Sun's digital journalism, near-live highlights of English Premier League and Scottish Premier League goals, the Dream Team fantasy football game and "Perks" - such as free gifts, offers and competition entries.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">That figure may seem low considering many major news sites are now attracting tens of millions of online users each month (even those with some sort of paywall, like the Wall Street Journal), and, indeed, it is down on the 30 million unique visitors The Sun's website was reporting in August 2013, before the publisher News UK took the decision to erect its paywall later that month. However, it is up on the 117,000 subscribers </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"></span><a href="http://www.marketingweek.com/2013/12/06/news-uk-insists-the-suns-digital-strategy-is-paying-off/">the website reported in December last year</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Many of these new digital customers have been attracted in at a cost to News UK - such as offering free annual subscriptions to people buying Tesco's Hudl tablet or those signing up to new contracts from phone operator O2. There has also been some cannibalization between print readers moving to digital, the company admitted.</span></p>
<p>News UK says The Sun's total paid sales (which combines the newly-announced digital figure and the newspaper's print October ABC figure) are now at 2.20 million, down 2.2% on the previous year (and down 5% for its Sunday audience). However, the publisher says that compares to an annual decline of nearly 8% for the popular/middle section of the market in October.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Analysts have previously said The Sun’s digital offering would need to attract about <a href="http://www.marketingweek.com/2013/12/06/news-uk-insists-the-suns-digital-strategy-is-paying-off/">300,000 paying subscribers to break even</a> and cover the reduction in display advertising and the estimated £30 million it paid for the rights to exclusively broadcast Premier League football highlights.</p>
<p>However, that "exclusivity" has come into question since the rise of apps like Vine, where individual users can post videos of goals directly to Twitter sometimes seconds after the ball goes in the net. In August the Premier League warned it planned to "clamp down" on users posting unofficial videos from games (or from their TV screens as they watch games at home), <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/28796590">according to a BBC report.</a></p>
<p><span>At a media event at News UK's London HQ on Monday to announce the new digital figures, The Sun's editor David Dinsmore admitted in answer to a question from Business Insider that goals posted to Vine was an "issue" and that Twitter, which owns Vine, will "need to step up" in the area of rights protection. He referenced YouTube, which has sophisticated take-down tools to identify when companies' intellectual property has been uploaded to the site without permission.</span></p>
<p><span>On the subject of social media, Dinsmore said that despite readers not being able to access its content for free "The Sun has not become a quieter brand as a result of being paid" - and if anything, "we are talked about more often now than we were previously."</span></p>
<p>Chris Duncan, News UK's chief marketing officer, also warned against over-reliability on social media. He referenced the report that Facebook is encouraging publishers to publish their content directly to its platform - a move he told Business Insider last month would be a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/news-uk-cmo-chris-duncan-on-facebook-mobile-publishing-2014-10">"tax on navigation" and a "tax on audience."</a></p>
<p><span>Duncan said: "[The way in which Facebook changes] would be a terrifying time for publishers whose traffic is entirely dependent on Facebook."</span></p>
<p><span>Overall, The Sun says it is happy with the progress of its paid-for online offering.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span>Dinsmore added "Th</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">is is a long term game, and the idea that within 18 months suddenly we are all driving around in Rolls Royces is probably still not the case. This is going to be a long term thing. But the progress to date fills us with a huge amount of hope for the future an enthusiasm.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"Across the industry we are seeing a number of different models tried out and I don't think there will be one single answer, but we are definitely seeing signs of success."</span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/news-uk-cmo-chris-duncan-on-facebook-mobile-publishing-2014-10#ixzz3K0iuKxBy" >The UK’s Biggest Newspaper Publisher Thinks Facebook’s New Mobile Publishing Idea Is A Farce</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-sun-digital-paywal-subscribers-2014-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-nytimes-paywall-2013-4CHART OF THE DAY: The New York Times Paywall Subscription Growth Slows Down (NYT)http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-nytimes-paywall-2013-4
Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:51:11 -0400Jay Yarow
<p><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/the-new-york-times">The New York Times</a>' online subscription business is slowing down. This chart from Quartz <a href="http://qz.com/78178/new-york-times-paywall-has-hit-a-growth-wall/">tracks growth on a month-over-month basis</a>. As you can see, sequential online subscriber growth is at its lowest point yet. </p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/517aabdeecad04ee45000004-618-/sai-cotd-042613.jpg" border="0" alt="Chart of the day shows quarter-over-quarter growth in nytimes digital subscription, april 2013" width="618" /></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-nytimes-paywall-2013-4#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-andrew-sullivans-attempt-to-turn-the-digital-media-business-model-on-its-head-2013-4Inside Andrew Sullivan's Attempt To Turn The Digital Media Business Model On Its Headhttp://www.businessinsider.com/inside-andrew-sullivans-attempt-to-turn-the-digital-media-business-model-on-its-head-2013-4
Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:20:00 -0400Josh Luger
<p class="MsoNormal"><img style="float:right;" src="http://media.tumblr.com/8e3746192f4c16f601979c0d9d001058/tumblr_inline_mkn41r2cui1qdqbys.jpg?maxX=400&amp;maxY=306" border="0" alt="image" width="400" height="306" /></p><p>This January, noted blogger <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/andrew-sullivan">Andrew Sullivan</a> left his perch at <em><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/the-daily-beast">The Daily Beast</a></em> to embark upon a highly visible and seemingly risky enterprise. He took his blog, <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/"><em>The Dish</em></a>, independent and decided to test whether it was possible for the operation to sustain itself entirely through a subscription-based revenue model. <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sullivan <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/01/27/a-declaration-of-independence/">initially set a revenue goal of $900,000</a> a year to maintain the standard of the blog. He specifically set out to reach his revenue goal without the help of any advertising revenue, saying &ldquo;<span><a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/01/27/a-declaration-of-independence/">it provides a vital revenue stream for almost all media products. But we know from your emails how distracting and intrusive it can be; and how it often slows down the page painfully.</a>&rdquo; </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Sullivan also declined to take any venture capital. </span>He threw himself entirely at the mercy of his loyal and sizable readership, outlining the core principle: <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/01/27/a-declaration-of-independence/">&ldquo;w</a><span><a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/01/27/a-declaration-of-independence/">e want to create a place where readers &ndash; and readers alone &ndash; sustain the site.</a>&rdquo; He asked readers to sign up for annual subscription that costs a minimum of $19.99, and gave the readers the choice of paying more if they wanted.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em>The Dish&rsquo;</em>s financial performance is being closely watched, as is every high-profile effort to monetize digital content these days. Luckily, for those interested, Sullivan has made the performance of his paywall entirely transparent.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://media.tumblr.com/da0d64446505028376ab3b023e186f9b/tumblr_inline_mkn45q3al81qdqbys.jpg" border="0" alt="image" width="450" height="203" /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, how&rsquo;s he doing? Well, Sullivan got off to a booming start. <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/01/03/the-dish-model-the-data/">He raised over $333,000 from 12,000 subscribers in the first 24 hours</a> his new blog went live, leaving him &ldquo;gobsmacked.&rdquo;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While subscriptions have continued to come in, the initial burst has gradually turned into a more consistent trickle (or as Sullivan puts it, they&rsquo;ve &ldquo;flat-lined.&rdquo;) As of March 12th, <em>The Dish</em> had collected over $660,000 from nearly 25,000 subscribers. Sullivan has <a href="http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/18/citing-flat-lined-sales-andrew-sullivans-dish-lowers-paywall-to-5-free-stories-every-60-days/">both tightened the meter</a> and <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/25/andrew-sullivan-dish-2-dollars-a-month/">introduced a new monthly subscription option</a> (a $1.99 &ldquo;app-like fee&rdquo;) in an effort to bump subscriptions in the last few weeks.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>A few months in, it&rsquo;s very clear that when it comes to the viability of Sullivan&rsquo;s experiment, things are still very unclear. So, we</span>&nbsp;decided to sit down with Sullivan to get his take on the performance of his model so far. We discussed how and why he launched the meter, analyzed what he&rsquo;s learned since the launch, and talked about <span>&nbsp;</span>his future ambitions for the&nbsp;<em>The Dish</em> and digital journalism in general.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The full interview is below (all bolds are our own).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">BI: You&rsquo;ve been doing a lot of interviews like this recently, talking more about the business of your blog than the articles and opinions within it. Do you find yourself doing more of these than you&rsquo;d like?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS: &ldquo;Yes [laughs]&hellip; but that&rsquo;s really not been the main struggle. It&rsquo;s been incredibly grueling because we had a quick period of time to completely transform what we were doing. We&rsquo;re all journalists, not business people. We had to figure this all out ourselves in a space of a month. We had to figure out a meter, how to set up a company, how to set up an LLC. At the same time you&rsquo;re writing every day and trying in a very competitive marketplace, and asking people for money, to put out the best editorial content you can.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I was at other media institutions, I didn&rsquo;t have to worry about this stuff. At the same time, it&rsquo;s very hard for what we ended up doing to be integrated into something larger. It became more itself, until it eventually made no sense.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>: So, what was the impetus for leaving The Daily Beast?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS: Well, the contract was up and we had to figure out what to do. And it&rsquo;s interesting. Each time we&rsquo;ve [entered into an agreement with a larger media company] over the last 13 years, the media landscape has changed completely. You make a deal for two years and the assumptions you made completely changed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Editorially and organically it felt like it was itself. And the advertising and CPM-based model was clearly softening.&nbsp;<strong>The concept that you could support online journalism like you could print journalism with ads&hellip; began to disappear.</strong>&nbsp;So, the only revenue we had [at <em>The Daily Beast</em>], I thought, wasn&rsquo;t going to go anywhere.&nbsp;I sure as hell wasn&rsquo;t going to gamble with sponsored content. I couldn&rsquo;t do that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>: How did the decision to take The Dish independent with a meter come about then?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS:&nbsp;We had a blue-sky sit down dinner [and we asked ourselves]: &ldquo;What are we trying to do with this? Where we asked what are we trying to get from<span>&nbsp;</span>this? What&rsquo;s the value in it for us?&rdquo; And then we went to a discussion of revenues.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What&rsquo;s the most valuable thing we had to sell? It was the connection we&rsquo;ve had with a readership that&rsquo;s been with us for a long time. It&rsquo;s an incredible bond. Most big websites are trying to trap the migrating flocks of Internet readers, and some are figuring out how to do that technologically better than others. But that was never going to work for us. That&rsquo;s not what we were.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><img style="float:right;" src="http://media.tumblr.com/e763c873769a32dfb4cca38ab450bc31/tumblr_inline_mkn5h0gY1x1qdqbys.png" border="0" alt="image" width="450" height="300" />So, we thought of the subscription idea, the meter idea&hellip;. Because we had no clue whatsoever what the response would be, we decided to start and see if we can do it with that alone.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>: How do you wrap your head around the meter concept?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS: Back in the day I would go to the Harvard Square bookstore. When I was there in 1984, having left England, there was no way for me to know what was going on back home except in the British papers. I would go there and flip through the newspapers. At some point the dude had every right to say &ldquo;Either buy the magazine or put it down.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s basically what the meter is. At some point, the store owner says to you &ldquo;Thanks for coming in, but either buy something, or leave.&rdquo;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em>BI</em>: <em>What were some of the other key decisions you made at launch?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There were a couple of eight-minute decisions. Literally the night before, I said &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t we leave the $19.99 field blank so they can have an option of paying what they want?&rdquo; That has earned us an extra $100,000 so far.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another decision was to be totally transparent. Lets show our readership exactly how much we&rsquo;ve got and continue. So if we have to make tweaks, like we just did, [they&rsquo;ll understand why].</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>: How do you feel about your new job responsibilities, being responsible for both editorial and business considerations for the first time?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS:<strong>&nbsp;<strong>I never wanted to be a businessman. I tried to avoid it. But, whether I liked it or not, it&rsquo;s a business.&nbsp;</strong></strong>Either someone else was going to get the profits, or I was. Also, the people working with me deserve a share in the profit, which is why two people [Executive Editors Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner] with me now have equity. I wanted to incentivize that kind of work ethic.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>: At launch, you indicated that you&rsquo;d need $900,000 in annual revenue to keep The Dish afloat. That number, for better or worse, has become the barometer by which your experiment is to be deemed a success or a failure. So, I wanted to dig into that number a bit more. What exactly does it include?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS: It&rsquo;s a conservative estimate. In our first year plans, our budget, when we mapped out how much all of this would cost &ndash; suddenly providing health care for eight people, legal fees, server costs, do the Ask Andrew Anything videos, studio to rent &ndash; it all adds up. It is those costs &ndash; and then because there are three of us who do the lion share of work - aren&rsquo;t on salary. We will live off of the profits if there are any.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The idea is not to get Andrew Sullivan to work for free. That&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m doing right now.&nbsp;I&rsquo;m working my guts out every day at a point in my career when I should be settled down, and I have no money coming in at all, except for my column in London. And I have to pay my rent here.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>:&nbsp;</em><em>Speaking of your move to New York, <a href="http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/02/21/me-brian-stelter-and-bed-beard/">which you have documented in some detail</a>, why did you decide to do it when you took The Dish independent?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>I moved to New York to figure out how all this works&hellip; to discover that no one knows.</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>: Has your approach as a writer and editor changed as a result of your newfound business responsibilities?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS: I think things have shifted a little bit. One likes to think one is above all this and say&nbsp;<span>&nbsp;</span>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a writer,<span>&nbsp;</span>I only produce what comes from the purist of my intentions and none of this affects me.&rdquo; And, it doesn&rsquo;t really affect me.<span>&nbsp;</span>I&rsquo;m not going to change my views on a subject because it&rsquo;s more popular.&nbsp;<strong>I&rsquo;m not going to stop writing about circumcision even though readers roll their eyes when I do. I&rsquo;m not going to stop shitting on New York, simply because it's hilarious to do so.</strong>&nbsp;None of that will change.&nbsp;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But I found that there had previously been a subtle incentive to create pageviews&hellip;.&nbsp;Our incentive now is to get the guy or the woman who read it today to subscribe and get the guy or woman who subscribed yesterday to re-subscribe in a year's time. That&rsquo;s what we need. We need to make the experience worth what they&rsquo;re paying for it and worth renewing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><img style="float:right;" src="http://media.tumblr.com/16da974630a857206fd2525780772afc/tumblr_inline_mkn49sCmJX1qdqbys.png" border="0" alt="image" width="450" height="300" /><em>BI</em>: And how do you go about figuring out how to do that &ndash; creating an experience worth paying for and worth renewing?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS: What happens in this process, since the first post I put up, this medium kind of tells you where to go. You just need to listen to it. Stats help, so do reader letters&hellip;. You try things, if they work great, if not, you let it go.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Three years ago, when it wasn&rsquo;t in our interest, we installed the &ldquo;Read On&rdquo; button and our pageviews were halved. We made a decision that the reader experience was more important than the monetization. That wasn&rsquo;t such good news for <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/barry-diller">Barry Diller</a> [laughs]. But it was a wise decision to treat those people right and give them what they want.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The surprise is being there first and establishing that consistency and building that audience that&rsquo;s sticky, it works online. The thing is you have to deliver every day.&nbsp;<strong>If you do not give them their drugs, they&rsquo;re going to fucking kill you. It&rsquo;s addictive.</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>The horrible thing is &ndash; it&rsquo;s as addictive for me to produce as it is for them to consume&hellip;&nbsp;&nbsp;My social life has collapsed. It&rsquo;s my blog, my husband, and Breaking Bad at this point. And that&rsquo;s not good for me.</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong></strong><em style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><em>BI</em>: So, what is the most addictive stuff for The Dish subscribers? What&rsquo;s the stuff they&rsquo;re paying to read?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS:&nbsp;Well, for example, we found the posts where people clicked on &ldquo;Read On,&rdquo; hit their limit and were most likely to say &ldquo;OK, I&rsquo;ll subscribe&rdquo; turned out to be my long pieces. And that was a surprise.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That signaled to me part of what readers of <em>The Dish</em> want is more of my own writing - which is truly flattering and very intimidating. But I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;d have the audience for those pieces had I not generated the other content and features that were daily.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They have also voted consistently not to have a comments section. That tells me about our readership and what they want. They&rsquo;ve been guiding me.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>: Do you feel the need to enhance your product offering now that The Dish is a subscription product? Are there other things you&rsquo;d like to do now that you are independent?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS:<em>&nbsp;</em>Of course, only a few months in, there&rsquo;s a bunch of ideas I'd like to develop. I&rsquo;d love to commission long-form journalism.&nbsp;<strong>I want to reinvent the magazine online</strong>, to have it be both what you read at work as a distraction and for fun, but in the same community of thought, commission a long-form writer to nail a 10,000-word piece on a subject that&rsquo;s within our area of discourse.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When you edit a long-form magazine, part of what you focus on is what <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/tina-brown">Tina Brown</a> calls &ldquo;the mix.&rdquo; You want some short pieces, some long ones, some funny ones, and some serious ones. You need the reader to enter it and enjoy it at any level of focus.<span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>You want to capture the full range of experience. What magazine editing is all about is letting readers trust editors to pick something worth reading. That&rsquo;s what magazine writing is all about. If we do it, we have to make sure it&rsquo;s done&nbsp;<em>really</em>&nbsp;well.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><em><img style="float:right;" src="http://media.tumblr.com/679acbd205a772210d83af4b0fd13246/tumblr_inline_mkn532VdAP1qdqbys.png" border="0" alt="image" width="450" height="300" /></em></strong><em><em>BI</em>:&nbsp;Why do you think that&rsquo;s the natural move for The Dish?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS: What emerged out of what I did as a single blogger is a very clear voice in this space. From that, we developed little magazine features &ndash; quote of the day, etc. So other people can share that sensibility and mind meld with you. That is building out a magazine from a blog. The next natural stage is to commission the long-form journalism.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Let&rsquo;s say in a fantasy world we got a Steve Brill. We&rsquo;ll pay him $10,000 -&nbsp;we&rsquo;re not going to go the slave labor route<strong>&hellip;&nbsp;</strong>At that point, why are we not a magazine? We got everything else. Now we have the cover story. Except you don&rsquo;t get it once a week in one big package stapled together, you get it whenever you want, in any format you want, and people who don&rsquo;t buy it can browse it.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>: How does this talk to who your audience is and how they consume The Dish?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS: We have not conquered the weekend.&nbsp;We are a workplace product. We exist for bored lawyers.&nbsp;We are the lunchtime break. The late afternoon goofy video guys. And we intuitively follow where our readers are. I post things I want to hit at peak usage hours.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But, as we&rsquo;ve grown, the lunchtime peak has become much more a plateau. You have to start from where you are, figure out the virtues of where you are, and evolve accordingly. But it&rsquo;s a constant evolution.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>:&nbsp;Are there other things besides long-form journalism you&rsquo;d like to try?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS:&nbsp;We haven&rsquo;t tried too much. We never really went into TV. I just didn&rsquo;t think we can do it well, I thought it was crass. In general, TV is better on TV. If we do video at some point [besides the Ask Andrew Anything], along with long-form journalism, and podcasts, we have to do it really, really well.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My goal now is to make the experience of having subscribed feel good. So it also means writing more and more stuff that&rsquo;s not available to anybody else, or giving them a free podcast where everyone else has to pay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><em><img style="float:right;" src="http://media.tumblr.com/20300ee883506f477acf0ea998613b8f/tumblr_inline_mkn5635WOg1qdqbys.png" border="0" alt="image" width="450" height="300" /></em></strong><em><em>BI</em>: What&rsquo;s stopping you from doing any of this right now?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS:&nbsp;Right now we don&rsquo;t have the human power to do it. Putting out 50 posts a day and have them not be stupid when there&rsquo;s so much else for people to look at is not easy. It&rsquo;s much harder than it looks. Three of us have worked together every day for five years now [to get where we are]. We&rsquo;re very lean.<span>&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We have a little motto, from a Shepard Fairey picture of Darwin, with the phrase &ldquo;very gradual change you can believe in.&rdquo; We are very committed to slow evolution. But we&rsquo;re having a debate now.&nbsp;<strong>Do we go big now? Do we wait for a year until we stabilize? Or is that actually taking a risk?</strong>&nbsp;Do we go for long-form journalism now? Do I give more of my savings to make the reader experience better and make them more likely to renew as well as generating some<span>&nbsp;</span>more analytical science?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The trouble is you do need a real a magazine editor to do that for us. There are limits on the human mind and body. I&rsquo;ve always said if someone ever dies from blogging, I&rsquo;ll be the first one. It&rsquo;s a hard time turning it off because consumers never turn it off.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>:&nbsp;</em><em>Back to the $900,000 number. There&rsquo;s a lot you want to do and cash is tight right now. Advertising dollars could help with that. However, you've seemed pretty dead set on making this a pure subscription play. Is there a scenario where you would consider advertising, as you could control the who, what, and how of it?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In my first post after we launched, I said I could be open to it down the road. So, I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve boxed myself in at all.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I just think people personally value, increasingly online, a higher signal to noise ratio and they may pay for a premium, ad-free, disruption-free process, where they don&rsquo;t even have to click for an unfolded post, and instead have an infinite scroll, that experience of a completely annoyance-free community. Gutting the normal webpage of comments and ads, that&rsquo;s a gamble on a certain kind of model.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What we have to prove first is that we can do what already do within a budget we can afford.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI:</em>&nbsp;And what about v</em><em>enture capital?&nbsp;</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS:&nbsp;I&rsquo;m a little nervous about venture capital. I&rsquo;ve seen too many people aim big and fall flat on their faces. The only other thing about venture capital&hellip; <em>The Dish</em> exists to say things other people don&rsquo;t want to say and doesn&rsquo;t have to ask anybody&rsquo;s permission.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Whether you like it or not, even if you have the best venture capitalists, if I say or stand for something they don&rsquo;t like, they&rsquo;ll always be more pressure on me. More pressure than even at <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/the-atlantic">The Atlantic</a> or Daily Beast. There, in my contracts I had inviolate editorial independence, much to the internal excruciation of David Bradley. There&rsquo;s nothing he could do about it, nor would he try to. But [with venture capitalists], you can see how the pressure to conform would creep in.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><img style="float:right;" src="http://media.tumblr.com/181e466879e3d059c874f50f0b7d101c/tumblr_inline_mkn5ixZc6Y1qdqbys.png" border="0" alt="image" width="450" height="300" /><em>BI</em>:</em>&nbsp;<em>Is there a red line you won't cross in your push to sustainability and profitability?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS:&nbsp;Advertising and&nbsp;venture capital are perfectly possible if we have to. But, I like the idea of remaining as pure as possible. I understand at some point we&rsquo;ll have to make a decision about that and our ambitions. Or, maybe not.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The line is I will not do sponsored content or native advertising. I will not blur what is advertising and what is editorial. I will always provide <em>The Dish</em> in an ad-free form for someone, for a core readership, at a certain price. That is forever.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think the alternative is people seeking editing they can trust, and the only way they can trust it is because it's transparent as possible, it corrects itself prominently when wrong, holds itself accountable, airs dissent within it, and [optimally] it relies entirely upon its readership for its survival.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>: It seems as if your experiment is also about demonstrating an ability to sustain what you consider to be old-school journalism in an increasingly digital world.&nbsp;Do you think the success you&rsquo;ve had, and the lessons you've learned so far, are transferable to other &nbsp;journalists or blogs? If so, how?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS: I absolutely think it&rsquo;s transferable. Tinypass is a very easy thing to put on a site, and people can pay whatever they want. It may be that it&rsquo;s not your day job, but it still adds up&hellip; At this point the role of the journalist has becomes less &ldquo;I am absorbing all this information for you, then figuring it out all my self and then writing it up,&rdquo; and more &ldquo;This dude has the right thing, I&rsquo;ve read it, here&rsquo;s the key parts, check it out yourself, put it up in real time.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s more like a disc jockey remix of current events and opinions.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>:&nbsp;</em><em>How much would you pay for The Dish? How much do you think its worth? I ask because it's very conceivable that, at some point, you may need to raise subscription prices on existing subscribers to hit your desired revenue goal.</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">AS:&nbsp;[Laughs] I pay $50 to <em>Talking Points Memo</em> so that will tell you something&hellip; I think its worth it. I&rsquo;d happily pay $50 a year and I can prove that I did.&nbsp;<span>&nbsp;</span>And I asked readers to do so.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am too falsely modest to say how much I&rsquo;d pay for&nbsp;<em>The Dish</em> and way too close to even understand the concept. It&rsquo;s very hard for me to see <em>The Dish</em> as some option for me to read.&nbsp;<strong>I, generally speaking, hate everything I write and say its all crap. But, every now and then I go on vacation and I look at it and read it. And I go &ldquo;that&rsquo;s not bad, is it?&rdquo;</strong>&nbsp;If I was a general reader and wanted to find out about the world, it&rsquo;s pretty comprehensive and kind of fun.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><em>BI:</em>&nbsp;</em><em style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">What happens if The Dish doesn't hit the $900,000 revenue number? Is there a conceivable way where it simply ceases to exist?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><img style="float:right;" src="http://media.tumblr.com/add0822e29e048de93ef1aa4d74f285e/tumblr_inline_mkn5jjDhDU1qdqbys.png" border="0" alt="image" width="450" height="300" />AS:&nbsp;We can still end up surviving as long as I don&rsquo;t take a salary at all. We could survive if I don&rsquo;t mind losing my savings. We&rsquo;ll survive, we&rsquo;ll figure it out by whatever means we do. We&rsquo;re going to make this work. But we&rsquo;re deliberately trying to put this pure model through the ringer so that we&rsquo;re forced to do other things if we need to.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Chris and Patrick are living on no salary at all and they&rsquo;re in their 20&rsquo;s living in Brooklyn. They need to have something in their bank accounts, and they&rsquo;re working incredibly hard. Their salaries come first.<span>&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I don&rsquo;t mind taking a big pay cut for a while, but not indefinitely. I do this for a living. You&rsquo;re not asking anyone else to do this for free.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><em>BI</em>: How would you like people to think of this experiment? What should the expectations be? What is a success?</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>I don&rsquo;t see you why you can't see it as your neighborhood business, a Brooklyn artisanal shop that makes money but is never more than it is.</strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>But, I've constantly underestimated this blog and what it will make me do.</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p>
</blockquote><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-andrew-sullivans-attempt-to-turn-the-digital-media-business-model-on-its-head-2013-4#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-york-times-ends-paywall-loophole-2013-2The New York Times Just Blocked The Easiest Way To Hack Its Paywallhttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-york-times-ends-paywall-loophole-2013-2
Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:11:00 -0500Mandi Woodruff
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4e776efcecad04982a000017-400-300/nyt-building-night-sept-2011-bi-dng-img_4799.jpg" border="0" alt="new york times building, new york times, nyt building, nyt, night shot, nyc, sept 2011, business insider, dng" width="400" height="300" />In the two years since the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/new-york-times" class="hidden_link">New York Times</a> slapped a paywall between casual readers and its coveted content, finding weak links in its armor has become something of a sport for webgoers.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>Unfortunately, one of the most popular workarounds is no longer, <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/02/new-york-times-closes-url-paywall-loophole.html" target="_blank">NYMag's Joe Coscarelli reports:</a></p>
<div class="parbase section entrytext">
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The easiest little hack of all, for the Internet savvy, was right there on the page: Deleting the "?gwh=numbers" section of the URL removed the obtrusive "Pay for this!" banner blocking the words. Not anymore.&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Today we noticed the address-altering no longer cleared the in-house ad for non-subscribers. </span><em style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Times</em><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> spokesperson Eileen Murphy confirmed as much in a statement:</span></p>
</div>
<div class="parbase section entrytext">
<blockquote>
<p>"When we launched our digital subscription plan we knew there were loopholes to access our content beyond the allotted number of articles each month. We have made some adjustments and will continue to make adjustments to optimize the gateway by implementing technical security solutions to prohibit abuse and protect the value of our content."</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="parbase section entrytext">
<p>We can't blame the Times for squirreling away as many subscriber dollars as they can, but fortunately for readers, there are <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-5-tips-you-can-try-to-keep-reading-articles-for-free-from-the-new-york-times-2012-3#" target="_blank">still a few clever ways</a> to get to the paper's content once you've surpassed the monthly limit.</p>
<p>Links from social media don't count, and opening posts in a different browser or deleting your cookies will work just as well.&nbsp;</p>
</div><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-world-of-credit-reporting-ftc-cbs-kroft-2013-2" >How America's Credit Reporting System Gets Away With 40 Million Mistakes > </a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-york-times-ends-paywall-loophole-2013-2#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-settles-with-belgian-newspapers-2012-12Google Is Going To Help A Bunch Of Newspapers Charge Readers For Newshttp://www.businessinsider.com/google-settles-with-belgian-newspapers-2012-12
Thu, 13 Dec 2012 12:01:00 -0500Foo Yun Chee
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/50ca0689ecad04b16f000005-400/men-reading-newspapers.jpg" border="0" alt="Men reading newspapers" /></p><p><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/google">Google</a> agreed on Thursday to help boost online revenues for a group of Belgian newspaper publishers and authors, settling a six-year dispute over copyright which it hopes will be a model for resolving similar clashes around the world.</p>
<p>Publishers have been trying to get Google to pay them for showing their online content in Web searches as more and more readers of the printed word defect to online media.</p>
<p>Under the Belgian deal Google said it will now collaborate with the Rossel Group, which owns leading dailies Le Soir and L'Echo, the IPM Group, which publishes La Libre Belgique, L'Avenir and with the authors to help them generate revenues from their online content.</p>
<p>"We have reached an agreement that ends all litigation. From now on Google and Belgian French-language publishers will partner on a broad range of business initiatives," Google said in a statement.</p>
<p>These include working with the publishers to ensure that readers pay for the news via paywalls and subscriptions and distributing content on smartphones and tablets. Google itself will not pay for the content on its services.</p>
<p>The publishers will decide which articles they want to charge. They will also be able to pull out of Google's web search and Google News whenever they want.</p>
<p>The case started in 2006 when the media firms took Google to a Belgian court, saying the search engine had infringed their copyright.</p>
<p>Google is also embroiled in similar disputes in other EU countries. Germany has proposed legislation to let publishers charge search engines for displaying newspaper articles. France and Italy are also lobbying for similar measures.</p>
<p>Google says its services drive traffic to publishers while its <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/adsense">AdSense</a> program, which allows companies to place banner advertisements on a website, pays $7 billion yearly to web publishers worldwide.</p>
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<p>Copyright (2012) Thomson <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/reuters">Reuters</a>. <a href="http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/media/brand_guidelines/legal_notice/">Click for restrictions</a></p>
</div>
<p><img class="nc_pixel" src="http://pixel.newscred.com/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT01YWY2NDhhNWQxNTQ0NmRmMTc1NzY3MjJlYjMxNTE4NiZvd25lcj1lMjI0N2Q1MGI3OThiNGFmYmY4ZWMwMzI0YmY4MDI1YSZub25jZT0xZjE1MWY0Ny0xOGIyLTQ2MmUtODE5ZS1jNTM3N2NhMzEzNzEmcHVibGlzaGVyPThjMDBmYmVlNjFkNWJjZjBjNjA5MmQ4YjkyZWJiY2Ex" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-settles-with-belgian-newspapers-2012-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/usa-today-not-comfortable-with-paywall-2012-12Why USA Today Is Not 'Comfortable' Charging For Digital Accesshttp://www.businessinsider.com/usa-today-not-comfortable-with-paywall-2012-12
Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:24:00 -0500Robert Libetti
<p>In a time when prestigious brands like the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-new-york-times-is-firing-more-journalists-charts-2012-12">New York Times</a> are having trouble creating a paid subscription model that is sustainable, USA Today publisher and MarketWatch founder Larry Kramer, says his paper is not ready to charge its readers for online access.</p>
<p>Kramer, who took over as publisher earlier this year, says he he's wants to distinguish USA Today's coverage from it's competitors before setting up a paywall.</p>
<p>He also thinks there may be a way to package USA Today with the local <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/gannett">Gannett</a> papers (USA Today is part of Gannett), in hopes of finding a pay model that works.</p>
<p>Kramer explained his logic to <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/washington-post">Washington Post</a> Chairman &amp; CEO Don Graham at our <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/category/ignition-2012">IGNITION conference</a> last week.</p>
<p>Watch the video below to hear what he had to say.</p>
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<p><strong>Don't Miss:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/advertising-on-tumblr-2012-12">How Tumblr Incorporates Advertising Without Users Noticing</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/marketwatch-huge-bet-on-a-tech-feature-2012-12">MarketWatch Made A Scary Bet On Developing One Tech Product That Helped Define The Company</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/usa-today-not-comfortable-with-paywall-2012-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-5-tips-you-can-try-to-keep-reading-articles-for-free-from-the-new-york-times-2012-37 Ways To Beat The New York Times Paywall (NYT)http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-5-tips-you-can-try-to-keep-reading-articles-for-free-from-the-new-york-times-2012-3
Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:17:05 -0400Kamaila Sanders
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4b4cf9050000000000f1b7f1/new-york-times-nyt.jpg" border="0" alt="new york times NYT" /></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/the-new-york-times" class="hidden_link">The New York Times</a> announced today that it's reducing the number of articles you can read for free before you hit its paywall.</p>
<p>You used to be able to read 20 free articles a month, but beginning in April you will only be able to download 10.</p>
<p>If you would like to keep enjoying the Times' reporting then it may be time to pay up and finally purchase a subscription.</p>
<p>The other option is to remain defiant and get creative about how you can still access quality reporting on important news happening around the world at a great price: free.</p>
<p>The last time this happened, computer whiz 's offered up some awesome hacks and extensions to get around the paywall. Then the Times came up with new hacks to counter them and many users were shut out again. Now it's harder than ever to break the Times' rules.</p>
<p>We put together a few tips that will still help you beat the paywall.</p><h3>Follow the NYT on Twitter and you will have access to links. You can read some of the most important stories the Times publishes without hitting the paywall. </h3>
<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4f68b23aecad047430000016-400-300/follow-the-nyt-on-twitter-and-you-will-have-access-to-links-you-can-read-some-of-the-most-important-stories-the-times-publishes-without-hitting-the-paywall.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>Read articles in a browser that lets you delete cookies when you close it. In Chrome you can delete your cookies by clicking on the wrench button > options (or preferences on a mac or Linux) > under the hood > content settings > cookies > delete cookies.</h3>
<img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4f68d089ecad04d258000052-400-300/read-articles-in-a-browser-that-lets-you-delete-cookies-when-you-close-it-in-chrome-you-can-delete-your-cookies-by-clicking-on-the-wrench-button--options-or-preferences-on-a-mac-or-linux--under-the-hood--content-settings--cookies--delete-cookies.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>Use all of your devices to access NYT articles including your tablet, smartphone, and all computers. Just make sure you use a different account for each.</h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4f68b2696bb3f78771000015-400-300/use-all-of-your-devices-to-access-nyt-articles-including-your-tablet-smartphone-and-all-computers-just-make-sure-you-use-a-different-account-for-each.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-5-tips-you-can-try-to-keep-reading-articles-for-free-from-the-new-york-times-2012-3#you-can-still-read-an-unlimited-amount-of-articles-from-links-through-email-social-media-blogs-and-search-become-friends-with-a-person-who-owns-a-subscription-and-have-them-share-news-of-interest-to-you-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/slovenia-online-news-paywall-2012-1Slovenia's Mainstream Media Is About To Go Behind A Giant Online Paywallhttp://www.businessinsider.com/slovenia-online-news-paywall-2012-1
Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:42:58 -0500AP
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4ebd59bcecad048815000008/slovenia-flag.jpg" border="0" alt="slovenia flag" /></p><p>BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) &mdash; Slovenia is following Slovakia in a project for media to earn revenue by charging a single fee for access to their online sites.</p>
<p>In May, all major Slovak newspapers and others went behind one common pay wall and offered unlimited access to areas considered exclusive in a project known as Piano, for a single fee of euro2.90 ($3.71) a month.</p>
<p>The Slovak Piano Media company, which is in charge of the project says it has been a success. It is planning to expand to at least three other countries this year. The 2011 figures have not been made available.</p>
<p>Piano Media said in a statement Monday a trial period in Slovenia will start Jan. 16, with the participation of eight major publishers, including the biggest daily paper, Delo. Users will be asked to pay euro4.89 ($6.25) a month.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/slovenia-online-news-paywall-2012-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/newspapers-rejoice-advertising-forecast-better-than-expected-2011-12The New York Times Rejoices, Advertising Forecast Better Than Expected (NYT, GCI, MNI, WMT)http://www.businessinsider.com/newspapers-rejoice-advertising-forecast-better-than-expected-2011-12
Mon, 05 Dec 2011 11:04:25 -0500Eric Platt
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4eb847996bb3f7b04c000004/newspaper-press-presses.jpg" border="0" alt="Newspaper Press Presses" /></p><p>The Gray Lady may be in luck. Two reports out this morning from Citibank and <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/ubs">UBS</a> show an improving print advertising picture for newspapers, as retailers drive ad lineage growth.</p>
<p>Channel checks by UBS's John Janedis show December advertisements in <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/the-new-york-times">The New York Times</a> up some 10% as department stores and film studios increase placements by 23% and 17%, respectively. That jump comes against an 80% lineage reduction by national automakers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Part of the steep growth is attributable to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/deutsche-bank-heres-the-secret-behind-walmarts-same-store-sales-growth-2011-11">Walmart's shift in advertising spend</a>. The mass retailer has moved much of its holiday portfolio to inserts, circulars and entertainment catalogs that have benefitted the print houses. said <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/citi">Citi</a>.</p>
<p>While the advertising for the New York Times is improving, the newspaper industry as a whole has yet to find a bottom. On Friday, the National Association of Newspapers updated its 2011 advertising forecast, predicting a decline of 4.8% in the fourth quarter, compared to an 8.9% contraction in the third quarter.</p>
<p>Shares in The New York Times and <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/gannett">Gannett</a> are up over 30% since the beginning of October. However McClatchy stock has retreated over the same time. Citi analyst <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/leo">Leo</a> Kulp recommends the stock on its lower valuation to peers.</p>
<p>"Overall, we suspect that there is still room for the stocks to run in the short-term," he said. "Given McClatchy&rsquo;s relative underperformance and high short interest, this looks the best way to gain short-term exposure to newspapers."</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/newspapers-rejoice-advertising-forecast-better-than-expected-2011-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/incredibly-uniques-to-nytcom-are-up-since-the-paywall-went-live-2011-10Incredibly, NYT.com's Readership Has Grown Since The Paywall Went Livehttp://www.businessinsider.com/incredibly-uniques-to-nytcom-are-up-since-the-paywall-went-live-2011-10
Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:01:00 -0400Noah Davis
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4bd5c4d17f8b9aa707530900/new-york-times.jpg" border="0" alt="New York Times" /></p><p>Remember how the New York Times' paywall was supposed to significantly hurt traffic?</p>
<p>Yeah, that didn't happen.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/nyt-com--incredibly-surprising-growth-in-unique-users/s2/a546362/" target="_blank">Uniques are actually up</a>, assistant managing editor Jim Roberts told a panel during the World Editors Forum.</p>
<p><span>"In September of 2010 versus 2011 there was a 2.3% increase to a total number of 34 million of US uniques," he said.</span></p>
<p>Page views were also relatively stable. Roberts said international page views had fallen but that there was "very little decline domestically."<span><br /></span></p>
<p>There was no mention of advertising revenue, although Roberts said there were 224,000 <span>paid digital subscribers. (He did not say whether that included people getting it <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nyt-lincoln-paywall-free-2011-3" target="_blank">for free through the Lincoln offering</a>).</span></p>
<p>Roberts, who was initially against the paywall, said he and the newsroom are pleased with its success so far.</p>
<p>We would have to agree, although it has not been enough to save the company from <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-york-times-plans-up-to-20-buyouts-heres-the-full-internal-memo-2011-10" target="_blank">another round of buyouts</a>. <span><br /></span></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/incredibly-uniques-to-nytcom-are-up-since-the-paywall-went-live-2011-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/12/how-the-nyt-paywall-is-working/Here's How The New York Times Paywall Is Workinghttp://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/12/how-the-nyt-paywall-is-working/
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 11:01:00 -0400Felix Salmon
<p><a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/12/how-the-nyt-paywall-is-working/"></a></p>
<p>When I&nbsp;<a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/07/26/the-nyt-paywall-is-working/">wrote</a>&nbsp;about the success of the NYT paywall last month, I got a lot of pushback in the comments and on <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/twitter">Twitter</a>. Here&rsquo;s a sample:</p>
<p><a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/12/how-the-nyt-paywall-is-working/"></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;The fact people pay speaks more people&rsquo;s average techno-illiteracy/laziness about how to change a link address in their browser than anything else.&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;Add ?ref=fb to the base link of any NYT article and the paywall drops, and Felix thinks this is &ldquo;working&rdquo;? Huh?&rdquo;</p>
<p>&ldquo;After seeing how many ways you can get by the pay &ldquo;wall&rdquo; I would say it isn&rsquo;t working at all.&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/12/how-the-nyt-paywall-is-working/"></a></p>
<p>But of course the paywall&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;working &mdash; with the emphasis very much on the &ldquo;pay&rdquo; rather than on the &ldquo;wall&rdquo;.</p>
<p><a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/12/how-the-nyt-paywall-is-working/">Click here to continue reading at Reuters...</a></p><p><a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/12/how-the-nyt-paywall-is-working/#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/on-porous-paywalls-2011-8On Porous Paywallshttp://www.businessinsider.com/on-porous-paywalls-2011-8
Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:55:00 -0400Fred Wilson
<p><a href="http://twitter.com/#!/felixsalmon" target="_self">Felix Salmon</a> has a couple great posts on the New York Times' paywall. He notes that <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/07/26/the-nyt-paywall-is-working/" target="_self">it has been successful</a> and <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/12/how-the-nyt-paywall-is-working/" target="_self">explains why</a>. Felix says:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Yes, the NYT paywall is porous &mdash; but that&rsquo;s a feature, not a bug. It allows anybody, anywhere, to read any NYT article they like. That makes the NYT open and inviting &mdash; and means that I continue to be very happy to link to NYT stories.</em></p>
<p>I've been a fan and a proponent of porous paywalls since <a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/monetize-the-audience-not-the-content.html" target="_self">studying the FT's model a few years back</a> and was <a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/01/the-ny-times-freemium-strategy.html" target="_self">very pleased to see the NY Times go with the FT's model</a>.<em>&nbsp;</em></p>
<p>Monetizing digital content requires a different mindset than monetizing analog content. The marginal cost of another unit of digital content is nominal. Unlike printing and delivering a paper, serving up another page view doesn't cost the <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/new-york-times">New York Times</a> much. So while the New York Times must charge its customer to recieve the paper, it doesn't necessarily need to charge a customer for every page view, particularly since they do run ads on every page served.</p>
<p>This doesn't mean that the New York Times can't and shouldn't ask their most active readers to pay. My partner calls this ex post facto monetization. You get paid after the fact, not before. And that's a mindset that many people used to getting paid before the fact have a hard time understanding.</p>
<p>Felix explains that since turning on the "paywall" at the end of March, the New York Times has signed up almost 400,000 paying customers for its online product and links to <a href="http://nymag.com/news/media/new-york-times-2011-8/" target="_self">Seth Mnookin's excellent NY Mag piece on the Times</a>.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px;"><em>The internal projections have been closely held, but several people have confirmed that the goal was to amass 300,000 online subscribers within a year of launch. On Thursday, the company announced that after just four months, 224,000 users were paying for access to the paper&rsquo;s website. Combined with the 57,000 <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/kindle">Kindle</a> and <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/nook">Nook</a> readers who were paying for subscriptions and the roughly 100,000 users whose digital access was sponsored by Ford&rsquo;s Lincoln division, that meant the paper had monetized close to 400,000 online users. (Another 756,000 print subscribers have registered their accounts on the&nbsp;Times&rsquo; website.)</em></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px;">These 400,000 subscribers have been obtained with seemingly no loss in visitors and traffic to the NY Times' website since the paywall launched at the end of March this year:</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px;"><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4e4932c569beddb96000000d/fred-wilson.jpg" border="0" alt="Fred wilson" /></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px;">So that's $80mm in annual revenue with no loss in traffic. That's what a porous paywall can do for you.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px;">I'd encourage the Times to be even more aggressive with it's porous paywall strategy. The mobile situation - where I have to pay for the mobile app but can read the website in the safari browser for free makes no sense. With ex post facto monetization, you want your customers to want to pay, not force them to pay. I think they can be smarter and more creative with their mobile monetization strategy.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px;">But all in all, I'm very pleased to see that content creators are starting to find new online models to fund their content creation costs. It costs a lot of money to send journalists around the world reporting on the important stories of the day. Printing presses and delivery trucks will be a thing of the past someday. But journalism will never be a thing of the past and we need to make sure it can be funded.</p>
<p><strong>Read more posts on <a href="http://www.avc.com/">A VC &raquo;</a></strong></p>
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</div><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/on-porous-paywalls-2011-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/fox-paywall-access-dish-network-2011-7Fox Is Going To Make You Wait 8 Days To View Your Favorite Shows Onlinehttp://www.businessinsider.com/fox-paywall-access-dish-network-2011-7
Wed, 27 Jul 2011 11:02:11 -0400Jen Ortiz
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4e301f73ecad04cd31000020/glee.jpg" border="0" alt="Glee" /></p><p>There may now be a paywall standing between you and the newest episode of "Glee."</p>
<p><a href="http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/471561-Fox_Plans_Pay_Wall_for_Next_Day_Online_Access.php">Fox had decided to change the way its audience watches its programming online</a> -- only subscribers to certain multichannel providers will have access to new TV episodes the day after they air.</p>
<p>Everyone else? There will be an eight day wait.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/471561-Fox_Plans_Pay_Wall_for_Next_Day_Online_Access.php">Dish Network is the first multichannel provider to sign</a> such a deal with Fox, according to <em>B&amp;C</em>, however, the network is looking to make similar "TV Everywhere" contracts with other providers.</p>
<p>As <em>B&amp;C</em> notes, Fox is not the first to embrace these "TV Everywhere" deals:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Nielsen began offering combined TV, DVR, VOD and online ratings that allow programmers to get ratings credit for programming that are viewed within three says and air with the same ad load."</p>
<p>Fox's new policy will kick in on August 15.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/fox-paywall-access-dish-network-2011-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/time-inc-commits-more-to-its-absurd-paywall-2011-7Time Inc. Commits To Its Absurd Paywallhttp://www.businessinsider.com/time-inc-commits-more-to-its-absurd-paywall-2011-7
Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:46:55 -0400Noah Davis
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4e26cf774bd7c88344040000/time.jpg" border="0" alt="time" /></p><p>Got $30 lying around?</p>
<p>Perfect!</p>
<p>Now you can get 56 issues of <em>Time</em>, full online access, and all of the magazine's tablet apps with the publication's new <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110719/time-magazine-rolls-out-printdigital-subscriptions-and-puts-up-another-web-paywall/" target="_blank">"All Access" pass</a>.</p>
<p>As <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/peter-kafka">Peter Kafka</a> reports, it's the second <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/time">Time Inc.</a> magazine to offer its wares in this manner.</p>
<p>(<em>Sports Illustrated</em> did so last year.)</p>
<p>But, in addition to announcing the deal, <em>Time</em> is also putting its magazine content behind a paywall. Website users will not be able to view articles from the magazine for three months unless they subscribe.</p>
<p>It's the second time the company has enacted such a paywall. Kafka says he's not sure when the magazine took down the first wall at Time.com - but this one looks here to stay.</p>
<p>It's a silly paywall.</p>
<p>Most of the website's content does not appear in the magazine &ndash; meaning it is free to be accessed by anyone at any point. If I'm a reader who is used to being able to read virtually anything on the site, and I suddenly run into an article I can't read, it's not going to make me subscribe; it's just going to make me angry.</p>
<p>The need to squeeze revenue from different sources is well documented. But this is not the right way to go about doing so. There either needs to be more behind the paywall (to entice people to pay) or less (so as not to piss them off).</p>
<p>This half-solution is 100% wrong. It's not going to work.</p>
<p>Perhaps <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/time-inc">Time Inc.</a> should launch a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hearsts-groupon-clone-could-be-a-huge-business-2011-7" target="_blank">Groupon clone</a> instead?</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/time-inc-commits-more-to-its-absurd-paywall-2011-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-york-times-may-have-it-right-how-its-paywall-strategy-could-provide-the-right-transition-2011-6The New York Times May Have It Right: How Its Paywall Strategy Could Provide The Right Transitionhttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-york-times-may-have-it-right-how-its-paywall-strategy-could-provide-the-right-transition-2011-6
Mon, 20 Jun 2011 01:23:00 -0400Larry Kramer
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/4dfb991b4bd7c837561c0000-400-300/the-new-york-times.jpg" border="0" alt="The New York Times" width="400" height="300" /></p><p>A few weeks ago I learned that the cheapest way to sign up and pay for the New York Times digital products was in fact to order the weekend delivery (Fri-Sun) of the printed New York Times to our apartment in New York City. If you are a print subscriber to the Times, even just a weekend one, you get free access to the digital versions. The cost of the weekend-delivered-Times ($15.20 every four weeks) was already about less than half the cost of buying the printed paper from the newsstands, so when you added in the fact that it was ALSO LESS than half of a full 24/7 subscription to all digital platforms ($35 every four weeks), this deal looked too good to be true.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com"></a>And some criticized the Times for &ldquo;paying people to take the print paper&rdquo; and accused them of undercutting their stated goal of getting people to pay for content, while others speculated they might not have even realized they were undercutting themselves.</p>
<p>But I have a different take. I think it&rsquo;s a brilliant strategy to deal with the biggest problem the Times and other traditional news media businesses face: the painful transition to business models that will work on digital platforms. These companies need to maintain the print revenues AT LEAST long enough for Digital Advertising to become big enough and effective enough to attract substantially more ad revenues.</p>
<p>One of the biggest problems newspapers face is the erosion of advertising to digital platforms. But while it is obvious that categories like auto and home classified advertising are much more efficiently done on digital platforms&mdash;and have moved on&mdash;many display advertisers have not yet figured out how to use the web or even mobile or tablet devices, more efficiently than print. Those display advertisers feel comfortable in print, and still get enough results from print, to be hesitant to shift larger dollar commitments to digital platforms.</p>
<p>So the print media companies have had to deal with the fact that while readers have switched to the web and mobile in huge numbers, the advertisers haven&rsquo;t moved nearly as quickly. That means that readers of the print product are still worth a lot more than readers of the web product in terms of how much revenue each reader generates. A print reader can be worth as much at 200 times more than a digital one in terms of advertising dollars generated.</p>
<p>So newspaper publishers are trying to keep as many people reading the print products as possible, at least until the ad dollars flow to digital as broadly as the readers have. They need to financial the transition period. But many of these newspapers have used absolutely the wrong incentives. The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, runs much of their best content in the print product only, boldly proclaiming &ldquo;Print Edition Only&rdquo; atop those articles in the paper. But rather than convince the reader to change their habits to suit the newspapers business model, this method only serves as a reminder that the newspaper&rsquo;s web site is lacking and, in effect, tells the reader who prefers digital to go elsewhere because the paper&rsquo;s best content won&rsquo;t be on the digital platform. Duh.</p>
<p>Newspapers must respect their reader&rsquo;s habits, even when they change, and they ARE changing rapidly. The papers must stop trying to get readers to help the papers out of their jam. Rather than trying to slow down change by forcing readers to do something they don&rsquo;t want to do, newspapers should concentrate on beefing up the news output on the digital platforms and helping advertisers to find their &ldquo;web&rdquo; legs.</p>
<p>The Times has taken a much better approach. It is effectively inducing the reader to read the print product by &ldquo;paying&rdquo; that reader to do so. It is &ldquo;rebating&rdquo; some of the cost of reading the Digital Times, which the reader wants to get, by asking the reader to take three days of the Times in print and allowing the Times to make more money from those print advertisers for now. It&rsquo;s actually not all that different from the strategies in happier newspaper times. When papers charged 25 cents, that cost didn&rsquo;t cover the newsprint and the ink on that newspapers. So the paper was effectively subsidizing the rest of the cost of that newspaper being delivered to that home because the advertiser would pay plenty to be carried into that home on the back of the paper.</p>
<p>There is absolutely no reason consumers shouldn&rsquo;t be paid to hear messages from advertisers. It&rsquo;s a fair trade. The advertiser wants the exposure and the reader&rsquo;s time has value. As long as that print edition is worth more to some advertisers, then it behooves the NY Times TOO give their readers a financial incentive to stay with print as long as possible. That will provide the continuing revenue necessary to support the paper until technology is sophisticated enough to give the advertisers the kind of true advantages in targeting and multi-platform selling that will drive significant increases in digital advertising revenue. In fact, it is quite likely that both digital AND print subscription fees will support a more realistic organization</p>
<p>There is also something else about this experiment that could yield very interesting information about changing reader habits. It is quite possible that the future of print newspapers may be on weekends or at least weekly. With information moving so quickly now, one conceivable scenario could be that newspapers put their breaking news on efficient digital platforms 24/7 but on weekends use print products to give context to the week&rsquo;s news and to look ahead. Essentially, the print editions of newspapers become what the News Magazines were when newspapers ruled the real-time news world. These new weekend (or at least weekly) publications may even look more like the news magazines, with longer and more reflective or investigative pieces appearing well-displayed in a print product. Oddly enough, it might look like The Daily Beast and it&rsquo;s new family member, Newsweek.</p>
<p>What&rsquo;s really interesting is that the combined revenue streams from all these directions could begin to support the significantly-sized newsroom at the center of it all.</p>
<p>As a weekend reader of the print edition of the New York Times, and a religious reader of its website and mobile platforms, I feel like I might already be looking at the first version of what the newspaper of the future will look like, and I like it.</p>
<p><strong>Read more posts on <a href="http://cscape.wordpress.com/">C-Scape &raquo;</a></strong></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-new-york-times-may-have-it-right-how-its-paywall-strategy-could-provide-the-right-transition-2011-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-journal-paywall-2011-6The Easiest Way To Read The Wall Street Journal For Free (NEWS)http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-journal-paywall-2011-6
Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:28:00 -0400Ellis Hamburger
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4df22f3a4bd7c88a61000000/read-wsj-extension.jpg" border="0" alt="read wsj extension" /></p><p>If you can't spare the change for a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/wall-street-journal" class="hidden_link">Wall Street Journal</a> digital subscription (<a href="https://buy.wsj.com/shopandbuy/order/subscribe.jsp?trackCode=aaaibmyv" target="_blank">$1.99/week</a>), there's a simple way to view any locked page for free.</p>
<p>All it takes is a simple <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/google" class="hidden_link">Google</a> <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/chrome" class="hidden_link">Chrome</a> extension called "<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pclnaginpkbignpbnkjojicpbilmieff#" target="_blank">Read WSJ</a>," which places a little "unlock" button next to any locked articles.</p>
<p>Click the unlock button, and you're off reading the article.</p>
<p>Apparently, the extension grabs a cached version of the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/wsj" class="hidden_link">WSJ</a> article when it was first published online, then serves up that copy to you.&nbsp;</p>
<p>This is even easier than copying and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-read-the-wsj-for-free-online-2009-6" target="_blank">pasting the headline into Google</a> and clicking back into a free version of the story from there.</p>
<p><strong>Don't Miss: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/best-google-chrome-apps-2011-5" target="_blank">15 Cool Apps That Are Crushing It On Google Chrome</a></strong></p>
<p>(via&nbsp;<a href="http://www.addictivetips.com/internet-tips/legally-bypass-paywall-on-wsj-and-read-articles-for-free-in-chrome/" target="_blank">AddictiveTips</a>)</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-journal-paywall-2011-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p>